Belief and Islam

appeared in their time mixed ’ilm al-kalâm with philosophy. In
fact, they founded their îmân on philosophy. The book al-Milal
wa-n-nihal gives detailed information on the credo held by those
heretical groups. While defending the Madhhab of Ahl as-Sunna
against those corrupt groups and rebutting their heretical ideas,
these three imâms gave extensive answers to their philosophy.
Giving these answers does not mean mixing philosophy with the
Madhhab of Ahl as-Sunna. On the contrary, they purged the
knowledge of kalâm from the philosophical thoughts
interpolated into it. There is no philosophical thought or
philosophical method in al-Beydâwî’s work, or in the tafsîr of
Shaikh-zâda, the most valuable of its annotations. It is a very
nefarious calumny to say that these exalted imâms took to
philosophy. This stigma was first attached to the ’ulamâ’ of Ahl
as-Sunna by Ibn Taymiyya in his book al-Wâsita. Further, to
state that Ibn Taymiyya and his disciple Ibn al-Qayyim al-
Jawziyya tried to enrich the Salafiyya madhhab is to divulge a
very important crux where people who are in the right way and
those who have deviated into error differ from each other.
Before those two people there was not a madhhab called
“Salafiyya,” nor even the word ‘Salafiyya’; how could they be
said to have tried to enrich it? Before those two, there was only
one right Madhhab, the Madhhab of Salaf as-sâlihîn, which was
named Ahl as-Sunna wa-l-Jamâ’a. Ibn Taymiyya tried to distort
this right Madhhab and invented many bid’as. The source of the
books, words and heretical, corrupt thoughts of today’s lâmadhhabî
people and religion reformers is only the bid’as
invented by Ibn Taymiyya. In order to decieve Muslims and to
convince the youth that their heretical way was the right way,
these heretics devised a horrible stratagem; they forged the
name “Salafiyya” from the term “Salaf as-sâlihîn” so that they
might ratify Ibn Taymiyya’s bid’as and corrupt ideas and drift
the youth into his wake; they attached the stigmas of philosophy
and bid’a to Islamic scholars, who are the successors of the Salaf
as-sâlihîn, and blamed them for deviating from their invented
name Salafiyya; they put forward Ibn Taymiyya as a mujtahid, as
a hero that resuscitated Salafiyya. Actually, the scholars of Ahl
as-Sunna ‘rahmatullâhi ta’âlâ ’alaihim ajma’în’, who are the
successors of the scholars called Salaf as-sâlihîn, defend the
teachings of i’tiqâd of Ahl as-Sunna, which was the Madhhab of
the Salaf as-sâlihîn, and, in the books which they have written up
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